


today i woke up twice

by windoworld



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Blood and Injury, Crying, Denial of Feelings, Everyone Is Gay, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No Sex, No Smut, This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, gay panic in more ways than one, its not slutty this is just pain, unless it does go the way you think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:28:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28664739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windoworld/pseuds/windoworld
Summary: it won’t go the way you think. or if you’re like my friend and you’ve read lots of fan fiction, you can predict it and it will go entirely how you expect. whatever happens, i hope you love my very first finished and published piece to the world.dedicate this to all the uvoshal shippers. i hope i break your hearts more. <\3*see end for notes if you’d like*
Relationships: Machi/Pakunoda, Uvogin | Ubogin/Shalnark
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	today i woke up twice

shalnark’s POV:

Today, I woke up on my own. It was slow, the world slowly focusing before me. A blur of colors and objects. Through half blurred vision, I turn to my left and start to take note of my location like I have been conditioned to. This is a routine of mine I have learned from growing up in Meteor City and pulling off countless heists with the Phantom Troupe. I feel a tinge of anxiety chill up my spine as I find myself in an unfamiliar bedroom. The walls are a basic cream color with no decorations. I can see light creeping through a window, the brightness muted by baby blue curtains draped in front. The more my senses awoke, I became aware of the weight on my body and my brain began to overthink like it does best. 

_ Am I in danger? Have I been taken hostage somewhere? Who is my enemy? Where am I being held at? _

I begin to panic and lift the weight of my body up on my elbows and look down to my waist where the pressure lies. A large arm was the cause of my issue, holding me at my side and stretching across my whole body. I quickly turn my head to my right and am met with a man’s face only inches away from mine. But before I can open my mouth to make a sound, a hand flies up to my mouth and covers it. It is then my brain registers fully who the face is.

Uvogin.

I bite at his hand softly, causing him to pull back his hand instinctively. He lets out a fake wince of pain, but we both know he’s too strong to be bothered by my little bites. I smile a soft smile of relief at the sight of my lover. 

He is wearing a look of calmness, something quite out of the ordinary for him. I find him most recognizable when he is fighting and sporting an expression of anger and excitement. This face of relaxation is so odd to see and yet it is so beautiful I can’t look away. 

And he can’t seem to look away from me, as he is staring at me too with this look I cannot quite pin. There is sleep in his eyes and under as I note his discolored eye bags. But there is something else in his eyes I can’t place. The look he is giving is radiating a feeling of…  _ warmth? Fragility? Gentleness?  _ No. None of those words quite work. I cannot place it, but the look he is giving me is evoking in me a feeling I have never felt before. 

_ Now that I think of it, It has been quite some time since I have seen his face up close this way…  _

I drop the weight of my body being held up by my arms and fall back into the bed I am laying on in a soft  _ plop! _

_ A bed… a bed? I am in a bed? I can’t remember the last time I ever laid in a bed. It has never been this … soft.  _

As I become absorbed in my racing thoughts and the delightful comfort of my head resting in a soft pillow, I snap back to reality at the sound of a loud yawning. I turn and see Uvo, eyes closed and mouth wide open letting out a loud groan of exhaustion.

“Did you sleep well?” I ask.

“Slept like a newborn baby. I can not believe I could ever sleep so comfortably!” He exclaims proudly. “You know, we don’t have beds like this in Meteor City. I would’ve still been sleeping for a week if you hadn’t woken me up with your moving.” He says in a teasingly accusatory voice, smirking slightly.

“Oh please. If it wasn’t for your obnoxious snoring, maybe  _ I  _ could’ve slept comfortably! You need to get that checked out, you sound like a car motor!” I tease with a laugh. This is a lie. Yes, he does snore, but it doesn’t bother me like it used to. If we’re being honest, it is almost like white noise to me. It soothes me and relaxes me to hear, like a lullaby a mother would sing to their child. 

He lets out a laugh and I begin to laugh harder at the sound of his. He has such an infectious laugh that took up the whole room, and there wasn’t one joke a Troupe member could make that he wouldn’t let out a laugh for. No matter how stupid and unfunny the joke or if he doesn’t get it, he laughs so hard that everyone in the room laughs along too. It’s always one of my favorite moments we share as a troupe. 

As our laughter dies down, I lift my hand out to cup his face, fuzzy as it’s always been and rough. For the first time, he looks nervous as I stroke my hand across his face. He doesn’t break eye contact once and I search his face for any changes. 

“Are you nervous?” I say in a whisper.

“Me? Nervous? Never.. I am confused though by this sudden change of heart you’ve seemed to have for me. You’re never this nice to me. I do like it so no complaints.”

_ I think it’s because I miss you so much..  _ I begin to think, but how can I miss him if he’s never left my side? So why am I acting this way? I wish I had an answer for him but I don’t know why I am so nice today. 

“Just take it as a blessing, I guess.”

“A blessing? You know the children of Meteor City don’t get blessings. We’ve never known that. We are damned to feel pain for eternity. We are sinners who disobey God.. or whatever other shit those priests used to yell at us.” He scoffs. 

I let out a breathy chuckle as I remember the priests that used to stand outside the church yelling obscenities at passerby’s, begging us to accept Christ as our savior and die for him like he died for us on the cross. I always laughed at them, living in such misery with no higher power ever showing us pity and yet they believe. Made me sick to see such naive people. There is no Heaven and Hell, there is life and death. You suffer your punishments or receive your rewards for your actions while you’re alive, then leave your burdens to your living kin when you’re dead. 

I begin to shift my hand slowly down his face to his neck until my hand ends up on his back. I lean in close to him, nuzzling my face in the curve of his neck. I breathe in the smell of him, so real and so comforting. His arm already around my waist pulled me closer to him, his palm outstretched and flat across my back and embracing me. Who knew something as simple as the touch and smell of a man could bring so much comfort? It brought over me a wave of sadness to be like this, though I couldn’t place why to be sad in such a tender moment.

We stayed that way for a long time but never long enough. Our bodies close together in silence with the only sounds being our slow breathing. Finally, I pulled back and looked him in the eyes feeling a swelling sensation in my chest. Now, more than ever, I longed to kiss him. Longed to kiss him like I had never been kissed before. I think he could tell my feelings, for his face softened and he began to stare down at my lips with a look of longing. We were like two lovers reunited after a long war, like we hadn’t seen each other for eternity. I longed like I hadn’t seen him for long but it hasn’t long…  _ has it?  _

I moved my arm from behind his back and slowly creeped it over to his chest, my eyes still on his lips until he tilted my chin with his thumb to lock eyes with mine. We stared like this for a short moment, exchanging unspoken words with our eyes in a way so unspoken but clear you’d think we were telepathic. 

I closed my eyes and leaned in, feeling his breath coming closer to me. I shifted my hand down to the middle of his chest and felt my hand become suddenly cold and wet. I open my eyes to look down at my hand and see it’s

_ red. cold. wet. messy. it’s blood. blood?  _

I blink in disbelief. I must be seeing things. I stare at it for moments longer, in utter shock. I’ve seen blood spill so many times before but this time I don’t want to believe my senses. Before I can further question, my hand starts to grow increasingly more bloody the longer it stays on his chest. I pull my hand back to reveal a gaping hole in his chest. Where a heart should be there is an empty hole. 

I look up in terror to his face to check if he is aware of the blood to see he has gone pale, the color drained out of him. His eyes are red from popped blood vessels and sunken in, like he had been beaten brutally. His mouth falls open almost as fast as mine. His body collapses into the mattress and I jump up to my knees as he lays there. His chest keeps leaking out dark blood, sputtering a bit and shooting out in short little squirts. I frantically cover his chest with my hands in a frantic panic to make it stop. I press down hard to contain the blood but it only ends up squirting against my hands and pooling out the wound under my hands. I hadn’t realized it until i turned my hands over to look at the blood on it, but my hands are shaking like I had been shocked with a taser.

I don’t know what compelled me to, but in a matter of seconds I was straddling his body and erratically doing compression. My timing was off and my vision was blurred in tears but I kept as steady of a pace as possible. _This can’t be happening. This isn’t real. I have to fix this._

“No. No, no, no! Stop it! Stop it, Uvo!” I screamed but it came out squeaky almost. My voice was so weak it was laughable. “This isn’t funny! Stop joking! I’m not laughing! I SAID IT ISN’T FUNNY!” I stayed silent for the next few minutes, trying to focus on getting my compressions on beat, but with every press there came more blood. His body jumped a little with every push until I couldn’t continue anymore. 

My senses were overwhelmed. My vision was obstructed by tears and my nose was overwhelmed with the smell of blood. My ears were deafening from the sound of my own screams and the sounds of the blood squelching in my hands. I could feel the blood everywhere on my hands to the point it was hard to keep pushing because my hands were slippery. I was so shocked I gasped for air, feeling like someone was sucking the air out my lungs.

_ This can’t be real. This can’t be happening. Not again. Not again. This is a bad dream. This is a bad dream. _

And it was.

Today, I woke up on my own for the second time. But this time, it was quick and sudden, the world quickly coming to light.

“Shal! Hey, Shal! Shal!” 

I turn to my left to see Machi. She looks at me with a face of distress and concern. Her hair is disheveled and her eyes I stare back in an entire confusion. I glance around to my sides to find I am back in a house. I quickly remember that we are in a house we looted in Greed Island. We are not in Yorknew. We are far away from there. 

“Shal, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

I notice her hands are on my shoulders, holding me down. I began to open my mouth to speak but my words came out as a raspy whisper choking out like my voice box was a clogged drainpipe. 

“Uvo.. Uvo.. where.. where is he?” I choked out, my hands beginning to pat around my sleeping bag, searching for his body as if it was something so small and easy to lose like car keys. 

Machi’s face quickly softened in realization of what was happening. I notice a glimmer in her eyes. Not one that’s happy, but one of tears reflecting light. Suddenly, as if a switch was flicked in my brain, I am flooded with memories as if I had been hit with another one of Pakunoda’s memory bombs, but more violent. 

_ The last kiss he gave me on the cheek. The feeling of waiting with the troupe. Hearing the fortune and denying all possibilities. Squeezing Pakunoda’s hand as she assured me he was alive and coming back, but I could tell she didn’t even believe her own words. I didn’t believe it either. Having to hear he’s gone. He’s gone? Is he really gone? No way.. no way…  _

“Machi.. tell me…” I whisper quietly. “Is it true? Is he?” I didn’t even say what I was asking about, and yet I could tell she knew. Her shoulders sunk down as a small tear rolled down her cheek. She quickly pulled me in for a hug and I let myself collapse in her arms. I am barely holding back tears at this point, some managing to slip out. I bite down my bottom lip, feeling like a balloon on the verge of popping. 

“I’m sorry.. I am so sorry, Shal.” She whispers in my ear. I break at this point and all my tears come out at once with a loud sobbing. I hear her let out small cries too. “I know, Shal… I know. I miss him too.” She says in a soft coax. “I … miss Paku too…”. We hold each other for a while this way, the pain of grief seeping out our eyes and escaping in our sobs.

“It hurts! Machi, it hurts so bad! It hurts so bad! I can’t do it! I can’t do it without him, I don’t want to! I don’t want to do another minute without him!”

I yell out everything in frustrated sobs. I can hardly breathe. Every breath I take is another shooting pain of guilt that I can even breathe. It hurts to cry. I feel like every tear drains what little will I have to carry on out my body.

“Shal, you have to. You will make it. You are so strong. I know you’re in pain. I am too. I hurt for Uvo too-” she begins, but I yank myself off her before she can finish her sentence.

“No, you don’t, Machi! You don’t hurt for Uvo like I do! You didn’t know him like I did. You didn’t feel him like I did, you didn’t see him the way I saw him! You… you didn’t …” I trail off, my words getting stuck in my throat as I think of what I was going to say next. Machi’s face is so tragic and yet so understanding. She does not have a traceable sense of anger at me. 

I begin to cry again, but this time more angrily at myself.  _ How could I say that to her? How could I treat someone who loves me that way? _

__ “Machi, I-” 

“I know, and it’s okay. I’m not mad. I know what you mean and I’m sorry. You’re right, I didn’t love Uvo like you did. I can’t truthfully say I did. My love for him was as a troupe member and a brother, but yours was different.”

_ Love. Love. Love. I … love …. him. The word I never told him. Right there.  _

“I don’t know how you feel right now entirely, but… I do feel it’s the same way I feel for … Paku.” 

She stutters to say her name. Hearing her stutter breaks my heart further as my guilt from yelling at her sinks deeper.  _ How selfish of me to yell at her like she isn’t grieving too. Like she isn’t grieving her lover’s loss… _

  
  


“But”, she begins, “no matter how terrible you feel, just know you’re not alone. I am here for you. I am here with you. The troupe is here for you. You’re not alone in the grieving. I am riding this awful ride with you, and I promise I won’t let you ever be alone for as long as I can help it.” She says with a sad smile. It’s sad, but I can tell it’s honest and her words are true.

I sniffle and begin to rub at my burning eyes and runny nose. “But… what if… what if it doesn’t get better? What if I always feel this way? What if I never love again? How could I continue on in this way? It hurts so bad, Machi. It’s unbearable to imagine any longer living this way.” I hiccup. The tears begin to well up once again but I force them back. Some still escape my weak attempts to hold my composure 

She lifts her thumbs up under my eyes and wipes the tears away with her hands as lightly as a feather. She smiles a crooked smile again. “I wish I knew, babe. I wish I knew. I don’t know if this pain will ever end entirely, but I do think we will learn to manage it. Just like we always have. You’ve always been stronger than you believe yourself to be, Shal. You’re a spider, a survivor of Meteor City, my best friend, my family. You are so amazing. I am so proud of you.” 

Hearing these words do not fix my broken heart or lessen the physical pain I am feeling entirely , but the words relieve my aching body long enough for me to take a full breath. 

“There you go. In and out, Shal. Here,” she says, grabbing my hands and squeezing them gently with hers, “let’s do it together.” We sit on the ground for a while, breathing deeply together in sync. It’s so hard to breathe. I am perfectly healthy and yet the grief has destroyed my ability to function. 

Once I have begun to learn to breathe again, I open my eyes and press my thumb into Machi’s palm. She exhales her breath and opens her eyes to look at me. “All good?” I nod in response. “Good. Now come on, time to go back to bed. We only have a few hours until daylight, and we have a busy day ahead.” She lays down and lifts her blanket up, motioning for me to come under. I hesitate, but the last thing I want is to fall asleep alone. I slowly creep under her blanket and lay my head on the pillow slowly. She drops the blanket on my body and it sinks into all the empty spaces my body can’t cover. I only wish there was a blanket that could fill all the empty spaces of my heart. 

This is simply the pain of grieving. This is my punishment. I had never longed to be a blind believer of faith so badly until now. To be able to cast away all my grief and pain with a simple hope that he is “in some better place”. If there was ever a hope of Heaven existing, it has died along with my lover, while the grief I am suffering through is Hell on earth. Uvo suffered his punishments for being born in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he has left the burden of his mistakes on me. I am carrying more dead weights than one.

I was never a dreamer until you left, but now I feel you and see you every night like you never have left me before. But you did, you fucking did leave. You left and we never said goodbye, because we never thought we needed to. I wish I could’ve told you a goodbye. Cherished how your face felt against mine when it wasn’t your lifeless corpse against me, and cherished your scent when it wasn’t one mixed with blood and dirt.

I thought nightmares only happen in your sleep, but ever since you died, my nightmares follow me in my waking life. I have felt physical pain more times than I can remember, but who knew emotional pain could hurt so much worse? You died with a dagger in your heart, and I live with your death piercing in my heart. Your heart was crushed and so is mine, so why do I keep living? Why did you die and I lived? 

Today I woke up twice, but the second time was without you. I hope that someday, I won’t wake up anymore without you. 

[FIN.]

**Author's Note:**

> hello and welcome to the end! are you crying? if you are crying or tearing up, i am sorry and im giving you a virtual tissue and hug but also as happy i did my job right! if you feel empty, im sorry again. if you didn’t cry, then wow. amazing job. 
> 
> a little bit of backstory of my writing journey is my love of writing started very young, but for years i’ve been stuck in this hole where i couldn’t bring myself to write anything i loved. nothing inspired passion in me. until i watched hunter x hunter and suddenly it feels like my passion for life has come back? it’s amazing and im so happy i watched this show. 
> 
> this story idea came to me right before i fell asleep at 4 am. i was trying to sleep when the beginning line of this story came to mind somehow. i tried shrugging the idea off but it kept staying in my head. i decided i needed to write the concept down to remember it. i became so addicted to this idea i wrote it in 24 hours. writing this was such a rush of inspiration and fun. i am so excited to be able to share it and see if people love it as i do. 
> 
> all i ask of you is if you have any positive words or nice constructive criticism, please do share in the comments! i am open to hearing thoughts on how to write better. and most importantly, thank you for reading. it means so much that anyone cares for what i write. have a good rest of your day and i hope to publish more soon!


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